Shoghi Effendi

First corresponded with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá about 1918. The Master
wrote to him “It is my hope that thy church will come under the
heavenly Jerusalem”. For very many years he tried to bring to
the clergy of the Church of Ireland and particularly the senior
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ones, the realisation of Bahá’u’lláh as Christ returned in the
Glory of the Father. In spite of his important books, “The Heart
of the Gospel” and “The Promise of All Ages”, no one in the
church responded and in 1947 the Guardian called upon him to
resign from the church. He complied immediately and moved
with his wife and two children to a small bungalow in Dundrum
near Dublin. He was one of the founder members of the first
Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Dublin and in 1951 was
elevated to the rank of Hand of the Cause. For many years he
gave distinguished services to the Guardian, not least of which
was the writing of the introduction to “God Passes By” and his
presentation on behalf of the Guardian of his paper “Bahá’u’lláh’s
Ground Plan for World Fellowship” to the inaugural meeting of
the World Congress of Faiths in 1936. The pamphlet he wrote
to all Christians under the title “The Old Churches and the New
World Faith” was sent out to 10,000 so-called “responsible
people” in the British Isles on the occasion of his resignation
from the church, and his last book “Christ and Bahá’u’lláh” was
described by the Guardian as “his crowning achievement”. He
participated in the Inter-Continental Conference, Stockholm,
Sweden in July 1953 and passed away in March 1957 at the age
of 81. (“Bahá’í World”, Vol. XIII, p. 841.)